Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Quizzes - ClassMarker

Hi everyone,I have just recently signed up to another great website called ClassMarker. This website allows users to create online quizzes for free. There are two types of accounts you can create I selected the free ‘standard’ option but you can select a ‘professional’ account that allows you more special features (for those quiz experts).Classmarker has been designed for a variety of purposes such as business training, education, distance learning, self-study online education and recruitment (ClassMarker, 2009). ClassMarker is fantastic for registered users such as learning managers to create simple and effective online quizzes/tests for students to complete. After navigating my way through the site, which can be a bit difficult at first, but hang in there I persisted pressing buttons exploring the site and found many useful options to create a test such as:

There also is the option to save tests to a question bank allowing the user to retrieve specific questions and use them again. This website assists the user/s by automatically marking, collating and graphing the results of the test/quiz taken (ClassMarker, 2009). Wonderful isn’t it!

I have made a short quiz for my prep class, a funny and fun way to record the students’ understandings of the story Rosie’s Walk by Pat Hutchins (A resource within their current unit of Environments).

As the students are in prep I had to read the questions aloud to the class and from their responses select an answer. You could use this tool in many ways within the classroom, students could complete quizzes by themselves, in small groups or as suggested earlier as a whole class. The class and I enjoyed this type of formative approach to assessment I found it very useful and the students explained it was “fun and different”. I feel that incorporating this tool into the classroom would be effective to enhance students cognitive/higher order thinking skills but learning managers must ensure they use the results to adapt learning experiences for individual students needs (Reid & McLoughlin, 2002).Oliver’s learning framework centre’s itself upon the interaction between the three learning aspects of; learning tasks, resources and support (AusInfo, 2003). This framework supports the use of the quiz as a formative tool of assessment within a unit of work. The next aspect is the resources required to complete the learning tasks, resources the students have used and explored to create their understandings of ‘What is an Environment?’ and the incorporation of online quizzes used to effectively monitor the students understandings throughout the unit of work. The online quiz supports the students by displaying what they have learnt and what may need to be revisited.

Overall I have found this e-learning tool effective though it can be time consuming to setup and difficult to navigate but I continue to try and create more opportunities to embed this tool within my classroom. I believe online testing will gradually become a more visible option for class testing. Keep an eye out!
Until next time,